#thuillier

15th (Service) Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. 1918 Vignacourt (France)

French couple, Louis and Antoinette Thuillier took many portraits of British troops that were then left in the “attic of a French farmhouse in the village of Vignacourt. They were found in 2011 by a team of researchers led by Australian journalist Ross Coulthart, who has since collected the images together in a book called The Lost Tommies. “

Louis and Antoinette Thuillier Collection

This title is not clickbait, and it's all in good fun I promise lol. I don't know how this slipped past my several readings of Vinot's biography, but as I prepare for my thesis, I have discovered an interesting detail about Saint-Just pre-Convention that I missed before.

As you might know, Saint-Just first aspired to public office in April 1790, despite not meeting the various age and tax requirements at the time. His friend in Blérancourt, Pierre Thuillier, who was a secretary at Blérancourt's town hall, aided Saint-Just in falsifying the town's tax records to claim that Saint-Just paid taxes. Antoine, who had not yet joined the National Guard or inherited his father's property, obviously had nothing to pay taxes on. What's kind of funny is that they had him listed as having paid 100 livres in taxes.

Here's the funny part- according to Vinot, no one in this rural town in the Aisne department would have paid anywhere close to 100 livres in taxes except for the town's miller and possibly the market dues collector. Here's the even funnier part, Thuillier originally listed his friend to have paid double this already obscene amount, but lowered it.

Vinot says that the notary Gellé, yes that one, did not realize or know about the falsified record, but in knowing the Saint-Just family, was probably at least a bit suspicious. Later, likely fearing the consequences of this false record being uncovered, when he became Commander of the town's National Guard, Saint-Just would buy a bit of national property around Noyon, which is the larger town near Blérancourt. This purchase of 14.5 scythes* (with eight pieces of land in Noyon, and the remainder in Pontoise and Salency) in June 1792, by Saint-Just would lend itself to reactionary rhetoric regarding Saint-Just's financial situation after Thermidor. Although, Saint-Just also likely bought it so he would be legitimately eligible to be nominated as a delegate to the Convention in the coming months.

I agree with Vinot that this interesting bit of information might be where some of the idea that Saint-Just was secretly a rich noble and other similar interpretations got its basis.